Reagan Policies Hindered Drug War, Report Says

April 14, 1989|Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- The Reagan administration severely hindered its own war on drugs as it ``delayed, halted or interfered`` with anti-drug operations that clashed with its determination to aid rebel forces in Nicaragua, a Senate subcommittee concluded on Thursday.

The panel said the administration repeatedly ignored evidence that its allies in the effort to oust Nicaragua`s Sandinista government -- including members of the Honduran military, Panamanian leader Manuel A. Noriega and the Nicaraguan Contras themselves -- were actively providing support and protection to drug trafficking.

Most of the evidence amassed in the panel`s 437-page report, released by chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has been made public previously.

Kerry contended that it documents a pattern of duplicity so glaring as to justify immediate remedies. ``The war on drugs must not in the future be sacrificed to other foreign policy considerations,`` the report said.

The document noted that at one point in 1985, late CIA director William J. Casey explained that he did not denounce Noriega for his relationship with drug traffickers because the strongman ``was providing valuable support for our policies in Central America, especially Nicaragua.``

Noriega later took advantage of his close relationship with the Drug Enforcement Administration by providing confidential DEA intelligence to drug traffickers, the report said.

The ranking Republican on the panel, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, distanced himself from the findings. He said the committee had been trying to prepare a ``consensus, bipartisan draft`` but that Kerry had used his chairman`s prerogative to release the version preferred by the Democratic majority.

McConnell said he agreed with ``substantial portions`` of the document, but criticized what he said were ``inaccuracies`` in reports about extensive participation by Contra soldiers in drug smuggling.

The allegations, he said, were ``old news`` that had been extensively explored and largely refuted.

The contention that anti-drug efforts were given short shrift in relation to other foreign policy goals is widely accepted.

An earlier report produced by the State Department, for example, stated that during 1988 ``political and economic instability in drug-producing areas ... have resulted in the subordination of our drug control agenda to other pressing concerns.``